Tourism plans for Vietnam base
Vietnam has unveiled plans to use one of the world's largest military bases as a jumping off point for tourism.
A military airfield at Cam Ranh Bay is to become an international airport capable of handling wide-bodied airliners.
The Vietnamese government hopes the scheme will attract foreign investment and entice international tourists to the region, which has resort beaches on the South China Sea.
The airfield and the nearby deep water naval base have been largely unused since last year when the Russians ended a lease which they took out when the Americans left after the Vietnam War.
BBC News - December 22, 2003.
Vietnam builds international airport at ex-U.S. base
HANOI - Communist Vietnam plans to turn a former American military base in central Vietnam into an international airport in hopes of boosting tourism to its white-sand beaches, officials say.
They said work was under way to add passenger reception facilities to the airstrip at what was once the U.S. naval and air base at Cam Ranh Bay in the province of Khanh Hoa.
"The new airport will be a hub to bring foreign tourists to all central regions as early as April 2004," a spokesman for the Khanh Hoa People's Committee told Reuters on Monday.
U.S.-built facilities include two 4,000-metre runways that could receive large aircraft including Boeing 747-400s, the official said.
Cam Ranh naval base has one of Asia's finest deep-water anchorages offering strategic access to the South China Sea.
The base, used by American B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War, was leased in 1979 to the Soviet Union which turned it into its largest overseas naval base and its largest military station of any kind outside the Warsaw Pact.
In May 2002, Russia lowered its flag at Cam Ranh after sharp cutbacks in its military budget.
Both the United States and China have eyed the Cam Ranh facilities, and Washington suggested an open port arrangement that would allow warships of all nations to make calls.
Reuters - December 22, 2003.
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